The Netherlands has become a hotbed of boundary-pushing,
underground black metal in recent years, with bands like Urfaust, Gnaw Their
Tongues and Dodecahedron contributing great efforts to furthering the genre. Hypomanie
are one of the lesser bands on the scene, but they’re also participants in the
very new international niche of metalgazing. The more even divisions of
shoegaze and black metal heard on early Hypomanie releases has given way to an
instrumental form of shoegaze/post rock with only very minimal metal
influences. If this wasn’t clear on last year’s A City in Mono (which it
was), it will surely be on this year’s awkwardly titled Calm Down, You Weren’t
Set on Fire. Black metal percussion and some slightly extreme forms of
guitar distortion remained on 2011’s record. This new record strips away the distortion
(which created a black metal atmosphere) and almost all of the metal drumming,
with only two tracks featuring rather chilled-sounding blast beats. Even and generic portions of post rock and shoegaze are the main course. This all
but exactly equals a complete border crossing of genres for Hypomanie.
I can see why Hypomanie traded off the black metal for a
more straight up shoegaze approach. The single member of the band, S, is simply
better at making arty-farty trend rock (which is sometimes good despite my derogatory
classification). There’s no question that on the fronts of technicality and
song-writing, Hypomanie’s last two releases are a vast improvement in terms of
quality. But, to put it bluntly, they’re boring. S has not taken into
consideration the interest of his earlier work caused by the as yet not fully
explored territory of this particular subgenre fusion. In the end, all this
comes off as is a lesser version of Godspeed, Mogwai, or even Isis. As a post
rock record, it’s pretty good. The textures are really very nice and the song
writing has moments of excellence. The only complaint I would make here is that
it’s a little static, sounding a little too similar to itself over the duration
of the album.
In short: I’m frankly disappointed with the musical
direction this band has taken. If Calm Down had been released ten years
ago, it would be an instant classic. But the times are changing fast and unfortunately
this now sounds regurgitated. Sehnsucht, although made with little finesse,
remains Hypomanie’s most important and interesting album, despite the actual
music on Calm Down being better.
Standout tracks: “Lullaby for Ian”, “Pale Blue”
Score: 6.0
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